One of the premiere design firms is the Aaron Sims Company and they worked with Weta Digital to create the CGI apes for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Gino Acevedo, Creative Art Director at New Zealand effects house Weta
Digital said he had to give a lot of credit to "a very good friend, a
very talented artist Aaron Sims." Aaron's team helped to bring the digital
apes to life and he told Under the Radar, "There’s still a lot of heartache because digital is sadly putting a lot
of the practical stuff away, but at the same time there’s still a lot of
the physical stuff that we still need to do. Aaron and his company
actually sculpted some busts of Caesar, so we had those as practical
things to look at and scan for reference."

Recently I had the chance to talk with one of the art directors from
the Aaron Sims Company and he told me a little about how the team
tackles these kind of blockbuster films. Steffen Reichstadt is a professional concept artist and art director for the Aaron Sims Company who's worked on Hollywood blockbusters like Sucker Punch (2011), X-Men: First Class (2011) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014).

He shared illustrations from various artists that worked for the Aaron Sims Company (ASC) on this project.

Click on the images to enlarge.Maurice Mitchell: What did the Aaron Sims Company work on for Dawn of the
Planet of the Apes?
Steffen Reichstadt: ASC originally designed all the apes for the first film (Rise) and
for Dawn we developed the face paints and tribal elements that the apes
wear. We also developed key scenes to figure out the basic look of the
apes in their environment with the new tribal elements.

MM: James Chinlund said they spent a lot of time studying primate culture. What's the most surprising way this influenced your designs? If at all?SR: What was interesting about Rise vs. Dawn was that for Rise we
really studied the way that apes move and how they emote. Trying to
show as much personality as possible in each character. With Dawn we
did a lot more research on tribal culture and ceremony and tried to
bridge the gap of simian and human.

MM: Was there a favorite design for the film?SR: I think Caesar and Koba were the favorites for the whole shop.
Both characters have such a powerful presence and it was fun coming up
with ways to change the mood through the alteration costume and putting
them in scenes.

MM: How much was your team influenced by the original Planet of the Apes films?SR: Of course we like to keep the original in mind and we're all
huge fans of the original. But for this series we focused on a fresh
approach and our main focus was maintaining the intensity of the
characters and helping facilitate the great story that's there.

MM: What's next for the Aaron Sims Company?SR: ASC has a lot of super exciting projects coming out this year
including but not limited to Hercules, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
Jupiter Ascending and the next Sin City.

Here's a little more about the project from the Aaron Sims Company.

We worked closely with Weta to create
the final looks seen in both Apes films. ASC designed all of the main
and ancillary ape characters from the ground up for the first film,
2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. We sculpted a bust for Caesar as
well, to ensure a hyper-realistic feel. In Dawn, ASC worked on aging
the apes and creating the apes' ceremonial look, which includes face
paint and other ornamentation taken from nature.

In addition to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, ASC was involved early
on in the design process and came up with the mech suits and alien
concepts for the June 6 release of Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow, and
the character designs for the forest creatures in Disney's Maleficent.

Aaron Sims, the owner of ASC, is also beginning to produce more
original content through his production company, Apollo Pictures, after
the critical success of his 2012 short "Archetype."

We're looking forward to some of the upcoming releases that we designed
forâ€”Hercules, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Jupiter Ascending,
and also proud of how our work turned out in some of the other 2014
releases: 300: Rise of an Empire, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Noah.
Please take a look at our reel and more of our work at ASC's website: http://www.asc-vfx.com.

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What is Film Sketchr?

This blog is about the often unseen world of concept design and storyboarding in science-fiction films and television. These artists work to bring the vision of the writer and director to life. My hope is you'll learn a little bit more about them. If you're an artist I hope you find inspiration from the talented artists featured.

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